Research at New York College — Spring 2017

Senior project in Computer Science is an excellent opportunity for a student to work on a large scale problem, combine knowledge and skills acquired during their studies, and prove that they have the optimum skill: the ability to learn new things.

An important area of research is the Internet of Things (IoT) and its applications to vertical sectors, such as agriculture, healthcare, sports, etc. (Raj and Raman, 2017). According to Mark Shuttleworth (2017), founder of Ubuntu and Canonical, one can find the next big thing in “little things everywhere,” creating software-driven business models on top of our zillions of devices.

A few interesting projects are under development during this semester at New York College (computer science program of SUNY Empire State College), based on the current industry trends and the activity of the startup ecosystem in Greece which the college is systematically attending.

eHealth IoT: Explore the use of sensors and mobile devices to collect health data and process them in order to extract useful information about a person’s health status and potential risk.

UV monitoring: Build a system that will record a location’s UV sun radiation intensity, record the measurements and push alerts to subscribers.

Agriculture rover: Build a prototype vehicle that will be used in agriculture. The vehicle will be remote controlled at first and will use a camera to provide feedback. In a next step sensors will be added to record measurements (e.g. soil status, moisture, etc).

Sound recognition: Build a system that will monitor sounds in a farm and will try to recognize where they come from. Research on proper algorithms will be undertaken.

Databases for IoT projects: Investigate requirements of large scale IoT and Big Data applications and examine SQL and NoSQL databases in order to conclude when to use each one of them.

Besides the artifacts that will be produced, the academic background of the projects is also significant. Research papers with the analysis and conclusions of the projects will be included in the 1st volume of the department’s journal which will be published in 2017.

Upon completion projects will be presented in a college event and, depending on their success, we plan to present in public events and other extra curricular activities.

At the same time a programmers’ club is focusing on those areas of study in order to prepare students to further expand these projects in the future or undertake new ones. The club organizes bi-weekly events (next event on Mar.17) and labs on topics related to IoT, Big Data, and programming in general.